Jump to content
Playing in the Sandbox Group Build Sept 1, 2024 - Jn 1, 2025

Can we be silly for a few?


GUY5Y

Recommended Posts

This site is amazing,so are the people(well,that's silly for a start,YOU,all of you make the site).....anyone up for sharing childhood memories? It seems almost all of us are "returnees"......So,my childhood memory.Making the airfix lanc,maybe 10 yrs old. I lived on a farm,and diverted a stream...........(seriously a trickle),then "dammed it" with twigs. So,I have a reservoir and a dam.My proudly built lanc.......who needs to paint it,it was moulded in black right?............was duly ignited with a box of matches stolen from dad......oh my,Barnes Wallis would have been proud of those smokey droplets. I was on target,the twigs burned,and I breached the dam!!.We all seem to say....oops,had 10yrs out.....anyone else have a memory of how we got here?

  • Like 8
Link to comment
Share on other sites

lol ... I can't quite remember my first kit ... It might have been a 1/72 Spitfire ... I do know that seeing Battle of Britain on the TV, in colour when I was about 7-9yo set off the urge ... that and reading Commando comics ... during the late 70's I think ... when the local newsagent sold just about everything in a large store. He had a large selection of Matchbox kits (aside from Revell and Airfix ... but the grey was boring and I liked the triple coloured plastic on offer with the Matchbox gear). The boxes looked more modern ... and the little plastic window showed you the sprues inside ... there were many built before I got a handle on painting ... Spitfire, 109, Fw190, Walrus, Corsair, Mosquito, Lancaster, B-17 ... but by far my favorite build was a A-20 Havoc - I knew the kite through one of my favorite Commando comic stories.

 

When I started back up a few years ago ... I snapped it up in with another couple of 1/32 kits I saw on e-bay ... not as much fun the second time around - too small! lol :D

 

I always remember walking through that newsagents' isles ... and gawking at the 'huge' sized boxes of 1/32 scale kits ... one of which was a Bf109E-3 ... I dreamt of having the pocket money to buy it one day ... and then my interests were taken elsewhere eventually ... I've always been tempted to buy one whenever I see it on e-bay ... but the newer tooled stuff is much better detailed ...

 

Rog :)

  • Like 5
Link to comment
Share on other sites

My first kit was a Monogram car I tried to paint with water colors when I was 6 or 7. Boy, was that a mess! By the time I was 15-16, I was building mostly 1/72 aircraft, and 1/35 armor.  Then I found girls and real cars! Started a Tamiya 1/48 Phantom when I was 18, but joined the US Army and put my model building on hiatus until my kids grew up.  

 

Started back into building close to 5 years ago, and boy was I surprised at the changes!

 

Btw-watercolors are not really recommended.....

  • Like 6
Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 2 weeks later...

My First kit was the revell 1:48 P-51 Big Beautiful Doll mustang when i was about 10 years old. I actually painted everything and then screwed up putting the checkered nose decal. After that I believe it was a B-17 or a B-24 I can't really remember. I just remember mixing my own paint color for the plane and it came out like a glossy midnight green. It was completely and utterly historically inaccurate but damn did it look good hanging from my ceiling.

 

There was one model I never finished and it has been bothering me for some. I can't even begin to tell you who the manufacturer of the model was or even what type of jet it was. I know that it was a yellow jet and had rubber wheels included in the kit that I thought was awesome at the time. If anybody knows at all what I am talking about I would really like to know what kit that was so I can buy it and actually finish it this time.

I have recently come back to the hobby and because me and the wife just bought a house it is really hard to find any type of bench time.

  • Like 3
Link to comment
Share on other sites

I remember being around 7 years old and was down with some illness.  I think I just had my tonsils removed and yall know that was a much bigger ordeal than it is today.  Why I dont know.  Aanyway,  my Dad brought home a small model of a Titanic and a BMW with the light blue read and white racer from the early 70's?  It was motorized.  No paint was involved in the car so it went together well.  In fact I had that model all the way up until the early nineties and it woudl still run!  The titanic was brush painted and ugly as hell, but I finished it non the less.  

 

Every year after, my Dad would wait until Christmas eve to shop which became a family tradition to this day.  He would always have a huge airplane model.  Man I wish I had all of those today!  I remeber him buiding a lot of balsa planes and a huge B-52.  MMmmmm MMMM that smell of Ambroid I believe it was?  

 

In my teens we moved into flying RC pattern.  He would build and I would fly em'  What great memories.  Thanks for asking as I havent thought of those in quite a while!

  • Like 2
Link to comment
Share on other sites

I reckon I was 9 or 10 and remember each weekend walking to "Toys, Toys, Toys" on Finchley High Road, weekly pocket money firmly clenched in my hand and just spending hours picking out the model I wanted from the rack of 2/6d plastic bagged Airfix kits in 1:72nd - I'm not certain but I think the first was a Spitfire.  It snowballed from there, until we emigrated to Africa and until I returned in 1980.  Hmm, some great memories .... "Toys, Toys, Toys" seemed HUGE in those days and it carried everything a kid could want :) I wonder what happened to it :)

 

Good topic Guy!

  • Like 3
Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 2 weeks later...

Fo some reason my gandmother allways bought me an Airfix 1/72nd ME109 at christmas from when I was about 6 till about 10. I also rember going to Woolwoths on a satuday morning with my pocket money and trying to make my mind up on what would be this weeks kit, usually finished by saturday afternoon,. not bothering to paint them being to keen to play with them.

  • Like 3
Link to comment
Share on other sites

I can't remember my first model, most likely an Airfix series 1 bag. I build loads of them.

 

At some point my brother and me managed to get our own hobby room, a tiny room in the attic where we shared an old desk.

Being the youngest, I got the side with the sloped roof above me.."you're smaller!"

When we had to come down for dinner...or whatever...mum hit the antique Swiss cowbell downstairs.

 

At first...no paint and an overkill of glue, but Humbrol entered our lives fairly soon and we raided the house for mums nail files.

 

Good old days...my wife's nail files are still not safe! :rolleyes:

  • Like 2
Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 2 months later...

Oh boys!!! Very equal with me, I remember not my age but it was a saturday morning in a shopping center nearby. My daddy bought me a Revell 1/72 P-40 with a shark mouth. At home we just build it together and I was really impressed about the teeth and mouth on that plane, so I loved this tiny plane and carried it always with me until I forget it in the summer time in the car, the sun gave him an interesting design. I think my next one was a Matchbox 1/72 Bf 109 E-4, did you remember the brown fuselage and the yellow wings?!  :unsure:

I also remember the old Revell glue with the brush, I think I had more glue on my fingers than on the model ( especially funny, when you try with glue on your finger to put a clear canopy into place. This poor pilot was always blind flying!!)

Or when you take to much from that stuff, it makes the plastic nearly liquid. So before mom send you to beed you say: one moment, I just will glue my landing gear on to my new plane!! Ok. a few DROPS and with a cool professional movement, zack and the gear struts are in to place. What a picture on the next morning: the bird lies on his belly and the gear struts are stretched out!

Oh and stories with the paint.......... but before I boring you  ;)

  • Like 2
Link to comment
Share on other sites

I always got 2/6 off my father every SAT. then shot off up to the local newsagent for a bagged Airfix kit must have done them all, my brother, cousin and myself being given a model plane each from my uncle who had them painted and hanging from his bedroom ceiling and then we destroyed them with an air pistol, boy was he peed off with us, a rainy week in Torbay in a caravan with my friend and his brother bought a pile of Airfix 1/600 warships, built them in two days and then fighting naval battles on the floor while it poured down.

  • Like 2
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.
×
×
  • Create New...